– The Rangers were defeated by the Montreal Canadiens, 3-0, tonight at Bell Centre. New York is now 4-2-2 in their last eight contests.

– The Blueshirts have posted a record of 8-7-2 (18 pts) overall, including a 2-4-1 mark on the road this season.

– Five of the Rangers and Canadiens last seven meetings have been decided by three or more goals.

– The Rangers held the Canadiens to three shots on goal in the First and Third Periods, which ties their season-low for fewest shots allowed in a period this season. New York also held Montreal to three shots on goal in the First Period of their game on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden.

– The Blueshirts out-hit the Canadiens, 32-13, in the contest, including 10 players who were credited with two or more hits. Dan Girardi, Brian Boyle and Brandon Mashinter tied for the game-high with four hits apiece.

– Christian Thomas was credited with three hits and registered two shots on goal in 12:46 of ice time while making his NHL debut. Thomas is the 10th new player to skate for the Rangers this season – Jeff Halpern, Rick Nash, Taylor Pyatt, Brandon Segal, Arron Asham, Benn Ferriero, Darroll Powe, J.T. Miller and Brandon Mashinter – and the third Ranger to make their NHL regular season debut, along with Chris Kreider and J.T. Miller.

– Dan Girardi was credited with a game-high, eight blocked shots, registered four hits and logged 27:04 of ice time. Entering tonight’s contest, he led the team in blocked shots and time on ice, and was tied for 16th in the NHL in blocked shots.

– Martin Biron made 15 saves and is now 1-1-1 overall, including a 1-1-0 mark on the road this season.

Team Schedule:

– Please note the Blueshirts do not have practice scheduled for tomorrow, Feb. 24. The Rangers’ next practice is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 25, at MSG Training Center.

– The Rangers will return to action when they face-off against the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at Madison Square Garden (7:00 p.m. – TV: MSG Network; Radio: ESPN 98.7), to begin a four-game homestand.

Didn’t they win some games last season? Trade Nash for Dubi and Gaborik for Prust? Maybe trade Hank for Perros? I’m not sure what Torts or Sather does here but these guys were a re-enactment of the 2002-2003 NY Rangers tonight.

Home team has last line change. So you send out goons (if we had any) and they send out goons. Remember the NYR/Devils last year at the drop of the opening puck? I guess it was in NY because Torts responded when he saw who the Satans sent out.

Someone should be very embarrassed. Goalie crashed, nothing. McD almost killed, nothing. 120 MPH slap shot into the Ranger defense with 1 minute left in a 3-0 game, 5 on 3 and an ankle is broken. Nothing.

I’m not talking about goon toughness; I’m talking about tough to play against! Good forecheck, hard on the puck, quickness, good hockey IQ, etc. The Rangers are not demonstrating any of that as a team.

I don’t see how they can prove anything. You have a roster of players, all sanctioned by the NHL, and you play the guys you think give you the best advantage. Of course, in the NHL, the suits don’t have to prove anything.

Manshinter, Asham and a 7th for Dubi? I’ve thought about this tonight and although I’ve joked about it in the past getting him back might be really good for these guys. Maybe not offense but a good teammate, decent speed, great board work and penalty killing. He doesn’t seem to be doing great in Columbus maybe we could get the dude back a lot less than we think. Maybe not.

Yea. It’s REALLY BAD, Jeff. We have no snarl, no jam, no toughness. Nothing. When Hagelin got roughed up I thought someone might do something. Nothing. Not one single moment of being tough or sending a message.

I had a relative who pitched for the Tigers. In a preseason game, the opposition hit Cecil Fielder and Sparky Anderson though it was intentional. He told my relative, who was a rookie trying to make the team that year, “Hit the first two batters.” I asked the kid what happened, and he said he hit the first batter, like Sparky told him, and would have been prepared to hit the second one, but everything emptied, benches, bullpens, everything and the party began.

Sounds somewhat silly, considering the difference between professional and youth sports, but I’ll tell you how I test my the character of my indoor soccer teams every year.

During one practice in which they lack focus or energy, I flip out and I tell them all to go home if they don’t want to be there. Last year, my team went home and we lost in the first round of the playoffs. Two years before, they immediately shut up and gave me the best practice I’ve seen. We went on to win the championship.

why whine about the refs. because they are suppose to get the calls right not all the calls but the hit on mcdonagh was obvious. i called it immediately from home. if they got thsoe calls right there would be less of those hits that ruin players lives…

Paciorety yokes the kid from behind like a cowardly punk stealing your gold chain on the subway, trying to snap his neck. Graboowski responds by defending his personal safety with his teeth because his arms were being held by a third combatant. Paciorety deserved what he got. He should have got rabies.

Callahan needs to be the team’s captain and produce better results. If the coaches are asking him to be a babysitter for younger players, the Rangers management should be severely criticized for gross misuse of personnel.

i cannot believe this team is this bad….i liked the off season moves. the top 6 scorers are back. they added nash, pyatt with size, kreider and miller, lost no defense man..sure prust was a good player but really not that good. dubi and AA nice 2.5 or 3rd liners…

Did you hear Tort’s tonight? About one minute, unless MSG cut him off. Right away he starts to get all snarly, doing his Bobby Knight impersonation with the Press, then Sam tosses him a couple of beachballs. Who do these guys think pay all the bills?

Gaborik is fine with a grinding, forechecking, digging line so he can float to the open ice. When he’s called upon for a complete game, he’s MIA. I think that’s just the nature of the beast within him.

coming in late here, and really appreciate how hard Pacioretty (a good CT kid) has batteled to play given that really bad hit he took from Chara and other such surgeries as, say and appondectomy (sp?)

BUT, he can suck my hairy, f-ing Mucklers for that g-darned hit on McDonagh- if you hear the feed from HNIC they even say “payback” for the hit McD put on him earlier (which IMO he slowed up on precisely so that he didn’t hurt him). Doesn’t change the outcome, doesn’t change the injury- but for g’s sake- suspend the m-f’er for precisely what our moose-loving brethern from El Norte aptly called “payback”. And if Shanny’s circus of inconsistency doesn’t do something about it:

BRING ON HALEY…..

this team has no cojones, no fight and no offense….so at least make it physically difficult to play against us. GDAMN IT.

true blue if you are counting on the nhl to do the right thing you will be dissapointed a 100% of the time.

mcdonaghs hits were clean and legal, paciorettys was not…..but the canadien fans will delude themselves of some other reality….mcdonagh could have creamed pacioretty, pacioretty was on his knees at the low board, he could have really pile drived him into the boards big time.. the prust hit was clean also……

loneranger February 23rd, 2013 at 11:51 pm
Carp: Youe earlier post “So, after 51 wins, 109 points, ECF, and the development of a very young team, you’re firing the coaches because the power play stinks? Makes perfect sense. That’s how you become the Islanders really fast.” Carp Last year was sort of a perfect storm. a diiferent chemistry of a team of all hard working players who when they had troublewinning, they would mix it up a bit and makehings happen. We don’t retaliate anymore, we don’t freeken hit, we lack passion. We hadGOD as a goalie, we had about 6-9 players who would crash through brick walls. Players are traded, other players get older; chemistry can change very abruptly. THIS IS NOT NOT NEARLY THE SAME TEAM AS LAST YEAR. THAT COMPOUNDED WITH INJURIES AND YOU STILL THINK THIS TEAM IS GOING TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS. Come on, how many month does this coach need to make this or his power play work He sits people to punish them and man they ccome back the better for it are you kidding. Now the one thing that hurt as more than any other team was the short season. We were a team that wore other teams out last year. We’re not the same condtioned team that we were last year. Why was Gaborik, Richards, Boyle Callahan not in proper condition when the season started. Were other teams off season conditioning programs that much better than ours. What reponsibility, not withstanding the injuries that we have had, must Tort’s and his coaching staff be accountable for. Do you think its possible with the exception of the very young guys that Tort’s is wearing very thin with our top players and slowing losing this team. When the times get tougher the tough get going. This getting to be like the Richard Harris Classic ‘McCarther Park.” We’ll never get this recipe again” What a mess!!!!!

Just finished watching this awfulness on DVR and I have now joined the “this team isn’t going far” group. If it was just bad offense, defensive breakdowns, turnovers, and injuries, I’d say this team could still right the ship. This team is plagued with a much bigger problem that is not an easy fix: they do not play as a team. They go into Montreal – which is one of the softest teams they’ll face this season – facing a slew of injuries. Pacioretty, a soft player, runs one of our better defensemen with a dirty hit that may have been with bad intentions and causes an injury that could be serious. Our response? Nothing. We don’t pick up the physical game, push and shove after whistles, talk trash, or get in a fight. Even after it was obvious we would lose the game, we did nothing. To the rest of the team, it appeared as if no one cared about the hit or the injury. And then as if to add an exclamation point on our indifference, Biron got run when the game was out of reach and aside from Boyle’s half-hearted effort, we did nothing once again. In my opinion, the team mentality will not come if it is not here by now, unfortunately. Here’s hoping I am wrong…

I really hope that McDonagh and Girardi are OK. McDonagh didn’t look dazed after that hit. I think he might have suffered a broken jaw or something. Girardi took a hard shot, I hope he is not hurt too bad.

Boyle for $1.7 million? I would definitely keep him on fourth line, but that Sather reclamation project I would classify as a failure. Gilroy? he doesn’t really belong here either. Maybe as a 7th defenseman but he runs around, poke checks, chicken little I call him.

We need some good news on the injuries and we need Nash. I don’t know how you fix team toughness, but I would imagine someone running a top NHL franchise would have better ideas than I do.

If Pachioretty gets suspended for that hit on McD, this league truly became soft. Between Hall getting suspended for trying to throw a legal open ice hit (and Clutterbuck not paying attention) and then McD turning his back on at the last second on someone he hit from behind minutes earlier. Yes, the hitters need to be more careful, but players who are getting hit need to be smarter.

Even Mark messier said, back in his day, he assumed everyone would throw a hit from anywhere whenever he had the puck, so he always protected himself. Guys today seem to think they are invincible and put themselves in awful positions to be hit. This is probably the 3rd time McD has done it too and he’s just going to get himself seriously hurt.

Tomb – it was a penalty on Hall and it should’ve been. But he lined up Clutterbuck for a hit expecting him to keep going forward since he played the puck. Clutterbuck decided not to and turned towards the bench, so he made contact with his leg.

There was no intent to injure. It was just a poorly timed play where Hall guessed wrong.

Trust me, I hate the Oilers, but the fact Hall got 2 games for guessing wrong like that and hitting Clutterbucks thigh (due to him deciding last second not to play the puck) and Jannik Hansen got 1 game for elbowing Hossa in the head is a joke.

The NHL referees are the sacred cows, I really do not understand the secrecy about the rating and the accountability in the NHL refereeing in the presence of a hundreds of of video angles on an every play to be examined in HD.

If a referee cannot tell who is interfeering with whom and calls it wrong, he/she should be suspended, upon a replay and re-examination of facts, is anyone telling us what the procedure is or isn’t??

This is not to serve as an excuse for our team, for any team is liable to suffer an inferior refereeing damage, but all the teams are somehow prevented from a meaningful inquiry into the NHL policy regarding their Referee Program. It certainly has not been addressed in the latest agreement.

So we are stuck with poorly trained (rule-wise) and physically unprepared referees who often interfeer with the game both physically and mentally.

Thank you for indulging this nefarious subject. (I may repost this later, for sure.)

So lets look at this roster..and take away Richards and Gaborik..ad replace them with “anything”..ok let’s see.. Ummmm ok how bout we replace them with Dubinsky and Prust? Maybe throw anisimov back in the fold I replace Krieder..
Do you guys REALLY think this team would be better off? Don’t answer while angry or feeling the frustration of what’s been a strange season thus far..take a breath think rationally and get back to me